On 25.03.2010, at 19:38, Vassili Bykov wrote:
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Andreas Raab andreas.raab@gmx.de wrote:
The philosophical point is about how a system like Squeak should integrate into the external environment. My opinion is that the VM should provide a safe cross-platform abstraction layer. As a consequence, I am in favor of plugins that provide abstractions, have a well-defined interface, and are safe however you use them. The only real sin I've ever committed in this regard was OpenGL because the interface is so big and the handling of extensions tricky otherwise.
Gilad's opinion (and I hope I'm not misrepresenting him here since this an extrapolation from discussions with Eliot) as far as I understand it is that the VM should be basically invisible - just the execution machinery and for the rest you go straight to the OS and do everything there.
And it's not only Gilad's opinion. The issue is not even _how_ to integrate into the external environment, it's _whether_ to integrate into it. You have to speak another language to integrate into another culture. Systems relying on VM primitives with safe abstractions choose to be tourists, and are bound to remain so.
--Vassili
Right - that's the way Squeak chose a long time ago. Run bit-identically everywhere, using the smallest possible interface to the host and do the rest on its own.
Plus, most people have no clue what they're talking about when it comes to plugins vs. FFI vs. Alien and just repeat what someone else said. Sad, but true.
Cheers,
- Andreas
Plus, Alien is newer, so must be better.
- Bert -